Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District resignations

From the Pagosa Sun (Chuck McGuire):

As previously reported, Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District Manager Carrie Weiss tearfully announced three staff resignations during last week’s monthly board meeting, including her own. Understandably, following nearly 28 years of devoted district service, it was a particularly poignant moment for her. At the virtual end of a lengthy public session, an emotional Weiss began by first asserting that, “I have some resignations to report.” While clearly struggling to maintain composure, she added, “Um, Lisa Dermody is leaving the district, and Nancy Stahl has, um, agreed to fill her position. It was opened up to the rest of the staff and Nancy was interested and she gladly accepted that. But, it (Dermody’s departure) is a huge loss to the district.” With somber hesitation, Weiss tentatively continued, “… Sheila Berger is leaving … and … it’s time for me to leave the district.”

More Pagosa Springs coverage here.

Pagosa Springs: Community Water Supply Planning Group update

From the Pagosa Sun (Chuck McGuire):

According to the meeting agenda, the hired facilitator, Maro Zagoras, of Desired Outcomes Inc. (Fort Collins), was to initiate discussions on her specific role, hopeful meeting outcomes, the day’s agenda and equally important, determining a group name and establishing immediate and future ground rules. That was to begin at precisely 4:30 p.m. First, however, Zagoras chose to “train” or educate the panel on proper conduct and procedures necessary in reaching vital decisions relevant to the group’s final charge, which the group itself must ultimately define.

Though the CWSPG has yet to clearly define its true aim — much less name itself, or designate an official group spokesperson — determining the best means of managing PAWSD finances has never been considered its ultimate goal by the 29 additional participants now seated on the panel. Rather, answering whether PAWSD should plan for future water needs and, if so, how, are apparently the questions that drew most volunteers to sit on the CWSPG panel to begin with. Certainly, any future water storage plans will involve detailed financing, in which informed district constituents should play a vital role. However, PAWSD is a complex special district funded by several convoluted enterprise funds, the management of which can’t be taken lightly.

More Pagosa Springs coverage here and here.

Pagosa Springs: Long-term water supply planning group inaugural meeting recap

From the Pagosa Sun (Chuck McGuire):

In light of recent community unrest regarding future water planning and storage issues, the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) Board of Directors asked that willing citizens step forward and assist in determining how best to assure long-term water supplies. By the June 9 meeting, 21 participants signed on, including local government officials, builders, Realtors, water experts and rate payers.

From the Pagosa Sun (Chuck McGuire):

Toward the end of another lengthy Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) Board of Directors meeting Tuesday night, some convincing community members moved what seemed an immovable object. As a result, the board suspended its construction-related Water Resource Fee (WRF) for six months.

More Pagosa Springs coverage here.

Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District update



Here’s Part V, Part VI and Part VII of Bill Hudson’t series PAWSD Makes an Apology, Of Sorts which is running in the Pagosa Daily Post.

More Pagosa Springs coverage here.

Pagosa Springs: The Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District and the Archuleta County Board of County Commissioners talk shop



Here’s Part I of Bill Hudson’s series PAWSD Makes an Apology, Of Sorts. From the article:

Last night, the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District board and staff made a lengthy presentation for the benefit of the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners. The meeting had been requested by the BoCC, and was destined, I think, to set Archuleta County on a new path. Either the BoCC and PAWSD would enter into a dialog about the proposed Dry Gulch Reservoir and begin to work collaboratively in deciding the future of the county — or the BoCC would begin to exercise its statutory oversight powers, and start intervening in the water district’s financial decisions.

Here’s Part II, Part III and Part IV. More Pagosa Springs coverage here and here.

Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District board election recap



From the Pagosa Daily Post (Bill Hudson):

On May 4, the residents and property owners within the PAWSD district went to the polls and elected two new board members, in a landslide election: Allan Bunch, owner of the Malt Shoppe restaurant, and Roy Vega, owner of Vega Insurance. Bunch and Vega ran on a platform that questioned current PAWSD policies — particularly the proposed Dry Gulch Reservoir and its funding mechanisms, along with the high level of debt the district has incurred in recent years.

More Pagosa Springs coverage here.

Pagosa Springs Area Water and Sanitation District board of directors election



Here’s Part I and Part III (I haven’t found Part II yet) of Bill Hudson’s look at the election of the board. I would think that Dry Gulch Reservoir will be part of conversation.

More Pagosa Springs coverage here and here.

Pagosa Springs: Dry Gulch Reservoir update

From the Pagosa Sun (Chuck McGuire):

The San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) and Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) boards of directors met in joint session Monday afternoon, with talks centering around acquiring rights to flood land owned by the Laverty family two miles northeast of Pagosa Springs. While uncertainty appeared paramount throughout the discussion, both boards and their attending legal counsel appeared intent on assisting the Lavertys in creating two separate conservation easements on their property, with hope of eventually acquiring fee title ownership of the inundated portion…

By agreeing to conservation easements on Laverty land, Whiting said the districts will also gain the right to store water up to the 7,400-foot contour line — a level that would constitute a reservoir of 35,300 acre feet. Though few people envision the need for an impoundment of that size in the foreseeable future, the districts feel it prudent to plan for the maximum allowed by court decree.

Problem is, the original court decree, which initially granted the districts sufficient water rights to develop a 35,300-acre-foot lake, has been appealed by Trout Unlimited multiple times. While both sides await yet another decision by Judge Gregory G. Lyman of District Court, Water Division 7, State of Colorado, the court has already reduced district water rights to allow a reservoir of just 25,300 acre feet, including 6,300 acre feet currently held by the SJWCD. Nevertheless, as previously guided by former SJWCD board president Fred Schmidt, the districts believe they must secure a site adequate for expansion, should future growth dictate a need for additional water storage. To do so, according to Whiting, the districts’ only two options have always been to either grab the Laverty land through eminent domain, or agree to conservation easements that will prohibit any future development, other than the reservoir…

On Tuesday, [Southwest Land Alliance (SLA) Executive Director Michael Whiting] insisted easements will give the districts what they need, while avoiding higher costs and the pubic relations nightmares associated with taking land through eminent domain. Given two separate easements, they could eventually flood the portion up to the 7,400 contour line, while resting assured the land above 7,400 feet would not bring residential or commercial development along the Dry Gulch shoreline…

At Monday’s meeting, however, districts’ attorney Evan Ela expressed concern with what he envisioned as their agreeing to a “partner in their lake.” While referring to the SLA, who will hold, maintain and enforce the easements in perpetuity, he feared an SLA board 20 or 30 years down the road that could interpret the agreement terms differently. Further, he suggested the districts try and find some way of eventually “purchasing” the easement on the inundated portion from the SLA. With that, they could eventually gain fee title ownership.

But, Whiting insists that’s not possible. “Only a land trust can hold whatever easements are created,” he said. “The Lavertys selected the Southwest Land Alliance to do these easements. They could’ve used another land trust, but we’re the only game in town. “The districts are a developer,” he continued. “No developers can ever hold an easement that encumbers a property that they themselves would develop, it’s illegal. Water districts can hold easements, but not on property they will develop, and Dry Gulch will be a development of that land.” That said, it appears the only real option the districts have in eventually developing Dry Gulch to the fullest extent possible is to agree to the conservation easements as proposed.

Meanwhile here’s Part VII of Bill Hudson’s series PAWSD Gets Called on the Carpet which is running in the Pagosa Daily Post. From the article:

As we will see in today’s article, the numbers that PAWSD shows us — or that it shows to lenders like the Colorado Water Conservation Board — are never complete numbers, nor are they always “up to date” numbers. PAWSD has at hand numerous reports and studies, dating from various years, and is able to select projections and water usage data as needed from those various reports.

Our readers may have noticed in yesterday’s article that the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District put the district’s taxpayers another $11 million in debt by submitting a 2008 loan application to the CWCB — and then used most of that money to pay off a previous loan they’d already used to purchase land for their proposed Dry Gulch Reservoir, to be built, PAWSD says, some time in the next 50 years.

Here’s Part IV of the series.

Here’s Part V of the series.

Here’s Part VI of the series.

Here’s Part VIII of the series.

More Dry Gulch coverage here and here.

Archuleta County: Board of Commissioners ask the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District to produce and annual report complete with the details about the proposed Dry Gulch Reservoir

Here’s Part I of Bill Hudson’s series PAWSD Gets Called on the Carpet running in (Pagosa Daily Post) report from last week’s meeting. From the article:

As a few of us discovered for the first time yesterday — sitting in the audience in the Commissioners meeting room at 10am — the County Commissioners have the power to request an “annual report” from any special district located all or partly within their county.

And that is what the Board of County Commissioners want from PAWSD, according to the letter (pdf) approved yesterday. Give us an annual report, the BoCC asked, that will clarify your financial condition and your long range plans. Especially, give us some justification for the planned 35,000 acre-foot Dry Gulch Reservoir, and the related impact fees.

Here’s Part II of Bill Hudson’s series PAWSD Gets Called on the Carpet running in the Pagosa Daily Post. From the article:

The Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District has found itself in the position of such a forward-thinking parent in the past few years — assuring us, the residents of Archuleta County, that if we would just pony up and swallow their $360 million, 35,000 acre-foot reservoir and water treatment project at Dry Gulch, our great grandchildren will someday have plenty of water.

At Tuesday’s PAWSD board meeting, board member Bob Huff referred to Dry Gulch critics as folks who “want to kick the can down the road” — meaning, they want to put off the hard decisions, and the immediate costs of a well-considered plan for the future. “We, as a board, have decided, we’re not kicking the can down the road. We’re going to start planning; we’re going to start moving on that plan. And that’s what the Dry Gulch [property purchase] is all about. We’re moving forward in a step-by-step way…

The most vocal of PAWSD’s critics include, of course, the Pagosa Area Association of Realtors and many of our local developers and builders who see the water district’s Water Resource Fee impact fees and Capital Investment Fees and Inclusion Fees — running $30,000 or more for a large, new home in Pagosa Springs — as part of the reason behind the slow demise of the Archuleta County construction industry, beginning in about 2006 when those new fees were established by PAWSD.

Here’s Part III where Hudson steps through the commissioner’s letter.

More Pagosa Springs coverage here and here.

Pagosa Springs Sanitation General Improvement District chasing USDA dough to build a new wastewater treatment plant

From the Pagosa Sun (Jim McQuiggin):

The board previously rejected the idea of pursuing USDA funding when it was brought to the table last summer. At that time, the USDA had set forth two requirements that the board found insurmountable: designing the plant to be outside a 500-year floodplain and conducting an environmental assessment that would have driven initial costs for the USDA application up (with no guarantee of securing USDA funding). However, according to [Pagosa Springs Sanitation General Improvement District supervisor, Phil Starks], the USDA has changed its requirements and appears to be more flexible in working with the PSSGID toward offering up funding. Seemingly entrenched with criteria stipulating a 500-year floodplain last year, the USDA now appears to offer an out, allowing the plant to be built within a 500-year floodplain “if no reasonable alternative exists.” Furthermore, Starks said, costs for preliminary environmental assessments have dropped significantly, from cost estimates between $70,000 and $100,000 last year, to between $30,000 and $60,000 for current estimates…

According to Starks, the PSSGID would likely receive a $3.3 million loan and a $2.7 million grant to go toward a $6 million plant — about $700,000 more than estimates for a previously rejected project. Starks added that the plant would be a facility that would last at least 20 years and, when time expired on the plant, would merely require an upgrade as opposed to construction of an entirely new plant. Previous wastewater treatment plants in Pagosa Springs have been, in Starks’ words, “stopgap measures” that required entirely new construction once the plants became obsolete.

More coverage from the Pagosa Daily Post (Bill Hudson):

Lately, we have been polluting the river. Just a little. That normally happens in the winter months, due to the Town’s aging lagoon-style sewer treatment plant; in cold weather, the bacteria that live in the lagoon and do the heavy work of breaking the raw sewage down into non-toxic materials, simply aren’t active enough to keep the sewer effluent from violating Colorado state standards. So we dump a little too much ammonia or solid waste into our local river — and we risk fines from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, CDPHE.

More Pagosa Springs coverage here.

Special meeting of the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District board Monday

From the Pagosa Sun:

A special meeting of the Board of Directors of the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District has been scheduled for 9:15 a.m. Monday, Feb. 8. The primary purpose of this meeting is for discussions with the Board of Directors of the San Juan Water Conservancy District on water matters and the development of raw water projects. Towards the end of the meeting, the boards of directors are expected to enter into executive session for the purposes of conferences with legal counsel for receiving legal advice on litigation and discussing matters related to land acquisition for development of raw water facilities and other matters subject to negotiation involving both districts pursuant to Sections 24-6-402(4)(a), 24-6-402(4)(b), and 24-6-402(4)(e), C.R.S. The meeting will be held at the district’s administrative office located at 100 Lyn Ave.

More Pagosa Springs coverage here and here.

Pagosa Springs to host meeting to show off plans for two new whitewater features in town

From the Pagosa Daily Post (Tom Carosello):

The meeting will be hosted by Riverbend Engineering and the Town of Pagosa Springs, and will be held in the south conference room of the Ross Aragόn Community Center Thursday, January 28 at 5:30pm. Construction of at least one of the proposed features is tentatively slated for this spring, with the possibility of an additional feature being constructed in the fall.

More whitewater coverage here.

San Juan Water Conservancy District unveils 2010 budget

From the Pagosa Sun (Chuck McGuire):

…the district has said it will continue working with the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) to obtain additional land for a future reservoir, the exact size of which will be determined sometime in the future. It will also participate in the final phase of the Lower Blanco River Restoration Project in 2010, as it has throughout the first three phases. Once complete, the project will afford improved water quality, fishing and public access to several miles of mountain stream.

The bulk of the district’s anticipated 2010 income is based on property tax revenues subject to statutory limitation of $102,648. Calculated by a certified mill levy of 0.316 mills, it is based on a countywide assessed property valuation of $324,836,502, excluding bond and interest payments, and election-approved contractual obligations. On the budget’s revenue side, the district expects $50,000 in grants (Environmental Protection Agency and Southwest Water Conservation District); the $102,648 in mill levy money; $7,500 in specific ownership tax; $2,700 in delinquent tax and interest; and another $6,000 in interest earned. The total should equal $169,348, or some $63,000 more than last year. As for expenses, the proposed Dry Gulch Reservoir project will account for the lion’s share, with $162,050 going to land acquisition and water rights. The Blanco River restoration project will receive $5,000 in district support; while other ditches and streams, cloud seeding and various contributions will total another $3,500. Assorted administrative and legal expenses will add up to $49,400, as public relations, education, and treasurer’s fees will cost $5,600. Total expenses should be $225,550. In 2010, the district expects expenses to exceed those of 2009 by approximately $33,400. As the new year begins, its budgetary fund balance will amount to $220,279, while its year-end budgetary fund balance should equal $164,077. The 2010 beginning balance will be roughly $86,000 less than last year’s, while the ending balance will fall short of last year’s by about $56,000.

More San Juan Basin coverage here.

Pagosa Springs: Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District scores $48,700 grant for water audits to help with conservation efforts

From The Pagosa Springs Sun (Chuck McGuire):

Working with Great Western Institute, a Colorado-based non-profit, the district successfully procured the “Water Efficiency Grant” to help cover costs associated with performing “SMART WATER audits” and installing water-conserving fixtures at select local businesses. Last winter, PAWSD conducted pilot SMART WATER audits at various volunteer businesses to gauge potential water savings and community-wide interest in a fixtures retrofit program. In the process, the district evaluates a business’s water use and determines water savings solutions. Typically, the most obvious and efficient actions include replacement of older water-wasting toilets, shower heads, and spray valves, while adding aerators to existing faucets, thereby reducing unnecessary flow and hot water usage. The district also performed irrigation audits to evaluate outdoor water usage by certain homeowner associations. Again, the audits identified needed fixture replacements and established annual reporting requirements, which will later detail water use before and after specified retrofits are made. Too, such “before and after” comparisons will measure program benefits from year to year…

In 2010, PAWSD intends to audit and retrofit another 15 area businesses, at an estimated annual savings of approximately 11.5 acre feet, or 3,747,287 gallons of precious water. The district invites all interested businesses to contact Water Conservation Coordinator Mat deGraaf to learn more about the program, or schedule a consultation for consideration in the next phase of SMART WATER audits beginning in March 2010. Meanwhile, for additional water conservation programs and practices directed at all water users, visit the PAWSD Web site at pawsd.org, click on the Conservation link, then click on Catch the Wave and Save. You can also contact deGraaf at 731-2691.

More conservation coverage here.

Dry Gulch Reservoir: Trout unlimited files Petition for Rehearing with Colorado Supreme Court saying storage safety margin reserve constitutes speculation

From the Pagosa Daily Post (Sheila Berger):

In its petition, Trout Unlimited requests the Supreme Court to remove from its November 2 opinion its endorsement of a one-year safety supply reserve, stating that, “the Districts would add a volume of water equivalent to a one-year’s demand to the amount of storage they would otherwise require, essentially doubling the size of the reservoir.” Trout Unlimited also alleges in its petition that planning for a one-year storage reserve constitutes speculation.

A one-year safety supply is, by definition, enough storage to supply one year of demand in the situation that a drought or another catastrophic event prevents PAWSD from diverting water from its stream sources. For example, in the summer and fall of 2002, even with sand bagging, a very minimal amount of river water was available for diversion. Because there had been no runoff in the spring of 2002, reservoirs were dangerously low. Even with severe drought restrictions, the District was very close to “running dry.” In 2002, the District had no storage safety margin. Currently, the safety margin is provided by the recently completed Stevens Reservoir Enlargement. For the first half of the 2002 drought year, sufficient river water was available for diversion. Reliance on storage became necessary in late June. The Trout Unlimited claim that a one-year safety supply doubles the size of the reservoir is an erroneous statement, as some of the first year demand would be served through river diversions and some of the storage reserve would be supplied by existing District reservoirs. Future drought patterns cannot be predicted with certainty, and the District has implemented its one-year safety supply margin to prudently plan for that uncertainty. The water districts feel that planning for severe drought is not speculative given the long historical record of, and recent occurrence of, severe droughts in the southwestern United States.

The response of the Supreme Court to the Petition is anticipated to be forthcoming in the next month. Meanwhile, the Districts will hold a special joint meeting at 6:00 p.m. November 30, at the PAWSD offices to discuss the case and the necessary next steps to preparing for another trial with the District 7 Water Court.

Here’s the release from the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District.

More Dry Gulch Reservoir coverage here and here.

More on last week’s Colorado Supreme Court ruling on Dry Gulch Reservoir planning horizon

From the Summit Daily News (Bob Berwyn):

According to Drew Peternell, of Colorado Trout Unlimited’s Western Water Project, the Supreme Court laid out a new test for public utilities. In the Pagosa Springs case, the court ruled that the city’s claim for water based on a 100-year planning horizon was not reasonable. “They have to show that claim for water is based on realistic projections for population growth. They can’t just pull numbers out the air,” Peternell said.

Undeveloped (conditional is the legal term) water rights are subject to periodic hearings in water court. Every six years, the water providers have to show their claim on the water is still valid. When the time for those hearings comes, they will be held to the new standards spelled out by the court, Peternell said.

Denver Water, the biggest player in Summit County, joined in the court case on the side of Pagosa Springs, along with other water providers from around the state. “We wanted the court to maintain a degree of deference to governmental entities that have to plan for future growth,” said Denver Water attorney Casey Funk. Funk said the Supreme Court decision established some new factors that water courts have to consider before awarding water rights, but that water providers still do have some flexibility in planning for future needs. Essentially, the ruling partly clarified some of the conflicts between the “great and growing cities” doctrine, which provides flexibility to plan for future water needs, and the anti-speculation doctrine, which limits pie-in-the-sky water claims.

More water law coverage here.

More Dry Gulch Reservoir coverage here and here.

Colorado Supreme Court rules against Pagosa Water and Sanitation District conditional water rights while holding that a 2055 planning horizon is reasonable

From The Pagosa Springs Sun (Chuck McGuire):

In this most recent ruling, the high court upheld the districts’ 50-year planning horizon decreed by Judge Gregory G. Lyman of District Court, Water Division 7 in a September 2008 ruling, and endorsed the districts’ planning approach to maintain a one-year water safety supply margin in its storage reservoirs. For a second time, however, the Supreme Court also remanded the case back to the District 7 Water Court for additional evidence regarding specified decree provisions and determination of “water amounts reasonably necessary to serve the districts’ reasonably anticipated needs in the 2055 period, above its current water supply.”[...]

In a press release issued Tuesday, a districts representative stated, “In its opinion, the Supreme Court endorsed statewide water rights planning efforts recently coordinated by the Colorado Water Conservation Board. The Supreme Court opinion also linked land use planning requirements recently enacted by the Colorado General Assembly to water court determinations of conditional water rights. In doing so, the Court introduced unprecedented legal elements into future water court determinations. “Additional trial before the Water Court will enable the Districts to extend their evidence of long-term growth patterns within Archuleta County in support of their 50-year water rights planning horizon and to demonstrate the actual reliability of water rights upon which the Districts currently depend.”[...]

From TU’s point of view, however, the Supreme Court decision reinforced the principle that Colorado municipalities must base water projects on clearly demonstrated and credible projections of future need. “The Supreme Court reaffirmed today that it will not tolerate public utilities speculating in water,” said Drew Peternell, director of TU’s Colorado Water Project, who argued the case before the state’s highest court. “This is a victory for reality-based water planning.”[...]

In its most recent appeal, TU argued that the districts’ revised figures were still not in line with credible future water use projections and amounted to speculation. In Monday’s decision, the high court unanimously agreed, finding insufficient evidence to support the quantities of water Lyman awarded, either in direct flow rights or storage. In its decree, the Supreme Court ruled that the 23,500-acre-foot size approved by the water court is based on “speculative claims, at least in part.” In response, TU insists that, “Unless the Pagosa districts can now demonstrate a ‘substantial probability’ that a reservoir of that size is needed to meet future needs, the water court must reduce the amount of their claimed water.”

More water law coverage here.

Meanwhile, the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District board approved a change in the diversion plan for Dry Gulch Reservoir recently. Here’s a report from Chuck McQuire writing for The Pagosa Springs Sun. From the article:

According to engineers, the modified plan will reduce water treatment costs while meeting current and short-term future demands, preserve senior West Fork water rights and allow incremental system development as needed…

As designed, Option 6A involves reconstruction of the Snowball pipeline from the West Fork diversion to a proposed treatment plant at Dry Gulch. Until development of the Dry Gulch plant is necessary, the Snowball treatment plant will be upgraded and expanded, while a segment of the Snowball pipeline (leading to the Snowball plant) is maintained. As the Dry Gulch plant is eventually built, workers will connect both plants with a new pipeline, and construct the pipeline from Dry Gulch to the cemetery tank. Meanwhile, as engineers further scrutinized the original options, they also realized that the quality of water coming from the West Fork was notably superior to that found in the main stem of the San Juan. By continuing to utilize West Fork water, PAWSD could reduce projected water purification costs, while maintaining stringent water quality requirements. Also, because the elevation of the West Fork diversion is hundreds of feet higher than the proposed Dry Gulch treatment plant, it will naturally pressurize the plant, thereby reducing the cost of building and operating expensive pumps. Too, building a new diversion at the Dry Gulch site would require transfer of the Snowball water rights from the West Fork to the main stem, through a Colorado Water Conservation Board in-stream flow water right. Based on discussions with the CWCB, doing so would likely result in subordinating the Snowball rights to the CWCB right, thus removing them from priority much of the year. The end result would be a less-than-firm water supply for District Two. According to PAWSD, Option 6A will allow system development in stages, as funding and demand dictates. An upgraded Snowball treatment plant and a newly-aligned Snowball pipeline segment around the Jackson Mountain slide area would come first, with an upgraded stretch between the slide area and the West Fork diversion next. Eventually, as the Dry Gulch treatment plant is built, an extended line would connect it and the Snowball treatment plant.

More Dry Gulch Reservoir coverage here and here.

Pagosa Springs: Water supply and wastewater treatment plant bids due in August

From the Pagosa Daily Post (Sheila Berger):

Bidding for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) – funded Highlands Wastewater Treatment Facility Elimination project opens [August 6]. [Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District] held an informational meeting for contractors on July 29 in order to prepare them for the contractual requirements of this project by providing an overview of key federal and state mandates and conditions of the federal stimulus funding…

Tentatively scheduled for the third week in August, PAWSD will solicit bids for the Hatcher Water Treatment Plant upgrade and expansion project. This project, funded by a very low-interest loan from the Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority, will provide upgraded technology for the Hatcher facility in order to meet more stringent state and federal drinking water requirements as well as to provide for future capacity expansion of the plant.

More wastewater coverage here. More water treatment coverage here.

Pagosa Springs: Stevens Reservoir expansion — wetlands mitigation

From the Pagosa Sun (Chuck McGuire):

Though Stevens can now accommodate considerably more water than it did when the district first declared its moratorium, it won’t be filled to capacity until wetlands mitigation work ends later this year. That work, now underway, is the first of a two-step process involving site preparation; excavation and placement of several inches of wetland soils; the installation of monitoring wells, depth gages and erosion control measures; road maintenance and planting of around 1,300 small shrubs. PAWSD officials believe workers will complete the first step in 120 calendar days. Then, depending on weather, the reservoir will be filled to capacity when district water rights are in priority, later this year. To complete the final step, district managers will again reduce the reservoir level by approximately six vertical feet, sometime around May 2010. That will allow planting of an additional 70,000 wet meadow and emergent plants, before refilling the reservoir late next year, when district rights are again in priority.

More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here.

Energy policy — geothermal: Pagosa Springs geothermal lease

Here’s Part One and Part Two of Bill Hudson’s series When is a lease not a lease? about the inner workings of the Pagosa Springs town council and its geothermal lease.

Hudson also reports that the town council is not going to pursue a new wastewater plant.

More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here.

Pagosa Springs: Chasing dough to build wastewater treatment plant

The new wastewater treatment plant for Pagosa Springs — originally scheduled for a 2008 completion — still lacks complete funding. Here’s a report from Jim McQuiggin writing for the Pagosa Sun. From the article:

Those discussions, in the form of a conference call held May 6 that included Starks, Pagosa Springs Mayor Ross Aragon, Town Manager David Mitchem and representatives from the Colorado Health Department, the USDA, the Department of Local Affairs, and the Water and Power Authority, kick-started the arduous process of chasing down necessary additional funding for the project. Although both the mayor and Mitchem reported the outcome of the call was “very productive,” both conceded the call was only a first step towards acquiring those funds.

Following up on the call, Aragon and Mitchem met with USDA representatives Tuesday morning to learn what steps would be needed to grab federal money.

“They want us to jump through hoops,” the mayor said, “but they have the money we need. There’s still a lot we have to discuss.”

Aragon reported that the USDA representatives brought up the possibility of a rate hike (one of several ideas) but said, “That’s not really an option, as far as I’m concerned. We’ve already gone up sixty-seven percent, and that’s much more than I wanted.”

The mayor also stated that, although the idea of scaling back the project was floated by the USDA representatives, the town would continue with the current scope of the project, adding, “We don’t want to build it and then find that, five years down the road, we need something bigger.”

No less sanguine regarding the conversation with the USDA representatives, Mitchem was nonetheless optimistic that the town could meet federal benchmarks set out by the USDA. “We’re going to move ahead with our preliminary plans,” he said, “We’re going to refine some of the engineering, review our current environmental studies and fine tune the flood plain mapping. We’re under a tight deadline from the feds. Everything has to be approved by Washington by October 1.”

More Coyote Gulch coverage here.